BOISE, Idaho  Tim Socha is well known for his work with the Boise State football team, his methods and demands having helped propel one of the bluest-collared programs into a national power.

But on a recent Friday morning, the Broncos strength and conditioning coach had seen enough torture for one man.

Jamar Taylor was lying on his back at the feet of the Prowler, a 75-pound contraption of steel. Taylor had just finished a third turn with the Prowler, each turn consisting of pushing the Prowler 5 yards up and back, 10 yards up and back and then 15 yards up and back at full speed.

Taylor’s chest was heaving, his words spit out in gasps of audible air.

Two minutes later, Taylor was on the sideline ready to sprint up-and-back across the end zone of Boise’s indoor practice facility for a third time. Socha said nothing, just slightly shook his head side to side as Taylor took off.

This was not for the purpose of impressing a visitor. This is how Jamar Taylor does things, how he has arrived here, on the precipice of an NFL career.

The Helix High alumnus has a draft stock that has only been ascending. He’s considered a lock to go no later than the second round in next month’s NFL Draft because he can play a nifty cornerback and because he has been killing the audition process, which continues with Boise State’s pro day on Thursday.

Taylor has been one of the stars of the draft’s lead-up because scenes like the one described above are his norm.

An hour earlier, Socha was standing in the Boise State weight room watching a group of athletes warm up when, unprompted, he launched into a soliloquy on the unique challenge of coaching Taylor.

“We have to back him off,” Socha said. “With the extent he’s gone to, he’s rare. He’s a once-in-an-every-couple-years kind of guy. We have a ton of guys here who work hard, but Jamar, he can do too much.

“It’s like, ‘When we get back from working outside for two hours, you don’t need to spend 30 to 45 minutes in here doing more work.’ ”

And so it is that when Taylor and a half-dozen of his former teammates return to the weight room after conditioning, the space is full of student-athletes from various sports.

The ensuing weight training is not easy, by any means. Let’s just say that the workout is social, the mood light.

Except for one solitary athlete, who does not participate in the loud conversations that surround him. No, Taylor stares straight ahead between most sets and in other rest periods moves to the center of the room to stretch or do resistance training.

He never stops.

More than 90 minutes later, only one football player remains in the weight room. In fact, there is just one athlete left among the group of at least 20 that was working out when Taylor first arrived.

“My bad it’s taking so long,” Taylor says to his visitor.

All around the Broncos football complex, the accounts are consistent.

Secondary coach Jimmy Lake, a former NFL assistant, recalls the first practice Lake was a part of after joining the staff last year. Following the post-practice secondary meeting, Taylor approached Lake asking if the two could meet further to watch every one of his practice reps again.

“I knew right away,” Lake said. “… He’s a perfectionist -- almost to a fault. To his credit, he’s changed a little bit. We talked about how he can’t analyze every play like he’s building a bomb.”

That doesn’t mean Taylor abandoned his devotion to getting better, to breaking down the game.

NFL scouts who came through the Boise complex the morning after Thanksgiving found Taylor where he can often be found – in the film room. “He’s a football junkie,” said Broncos linebacker Tommy Smith, Taylor’s closest friend. “… He studies so much. I don’t know how he can watch that much film.”

Smith marvels, too, at Taylor’s competitiveness.

“The weight room, the field, he wants to be the best,” Smith said. “If he sees someone in practice and he feels like they’re doing better than him, you can see him, he starts working even harder.”

Like every cornerback who ever bumped and ran, mixed zone with man and survived on that island, there is an underlying confidence to everything Taylor does and says.

When he talks about crossing the street, it is with the implication he absolutely killed the movement. When he judges a movie, his word is gospel.

It’s not arrogance. It’s survival. Being a cornerback is lonely, dangerous work.

The line between cocky and fearful is a border every cornerback straddles. The good ones find how to live with the best kind of confidence, an invincibility soaked in humility.

With Taylor, it is something of a paradox.

“Believe it or not,” Taylor said, “I doubt myself a lot.”

Taylor acknowledges he is trying to relax more, to not beat himself up or wear himself down.

However, deriving his inspiration from a pessimistic base has served Taylor well as he set about answering the questions that accompany a would-be NFL cornerback coming from outside the BCS.

The NFL types wanted to see if he could match up with the receivers from the big conferences during Senior Bowl week. Taylor did.

At the Combine, they needed him to demonstrate his speed. A 4.39-second 40 was fourth-fastest among all cornerbacks. His 22 reps in the bench press were tops at his position.

So how does a draft riser who thrives on bad juju rectify in his mind the positive momentum? He doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Let’s say everything does work out,” Taylor said, “and I go to camp and show everyone I can play, and my rookie year I show I can ball. After that it will be, ‘See what you can work on before your second year.’ ”

Be it that he was in high school motivated to “do the same thing” as fellow Helix alums Reggie Bush and Alex Smith had before him or that he was first-team All-Mountain West but often second fiddle to San Diego State’s Leon McFadden when the conference’s top corners were discussed, Taylor seemingly has no trouble finding motivation.

If he does, he simply manufactures it. It’s him against the will to not fail.